"Continuing Education" : SCTC in Backstage

So, while it doesn't look this is the weekend that I catch up on my blogging (it usually takes me a month or so to jump back into the game after a big show!), I wanted to let you all know that there are big big things happening over at Stolen Chair HQ. In the next couple of weeks, announcing our exciting 2008 season, patting ourselves on the back for some very good news, and restructuring the entire way the company creates new work.

But until then...content thyselves with this week's Backstage article about alumni-founded theatre companies, featuring a section about Stolen Chair's Swarthmorean history and quotes from yours truly.

Swarthmorean Sojourn (w/slideshow!!!)

The show always goes on, doesn't it? After what was one of the most difficult tech weeks Stolen Chair ever had, we somehow managed to pull off last weekend's gig performing Commedia dell'Artemisia at Swarthmore College's Alumni Weekend. In the week leading up to our departure, David and I probably slept a combined total of 6 hours, staying up far too late to build the set in my apartment (my neighbors must looove me!). And if it wasn't for the kindness of a Rosebrand associate named Marco, the two hours we spent in traffic just blocks from the Holland Tunnel might have prevented us from picking up the backdrops that were central to the design. But we made it to Swarthmore, PA with the set and the cast in about as many pieces as they were supposed to be.

The weekend was Kiran and my 5th reunion and Stolen Chair's 5th anniversary all wrapped up together. Our directing mentor, Allen Kuharski, arranged the event as an opportunity for us to perform at the school that has been so generous in its support of the company for the past 5 years. It was also the show's "out-of-town trial," an opportunity to put it up in front of a large audience before bringing it to the Pretentious Festival this weekend (have you bought your tickets yet?!). We had great turnout from class years '42 through '02 and brilliant Swarthmorean feedback from the audience; the performance simultaneously whet my appetite for the upcoming Pretentious shows and began the countdown towards the inevitable post-pardum depression that will set in when this fabulous show goes, as James Comtois says, to that Great Production in the Sky. Luckily, even before Commedia closes on the 29th, we'll be kickstarting Kinderspiel in earnest at a June 25th reading for Soho Think Tank's 6th Floor Series.

Stressful though it might be to spend every waking moment with the same group of people, all of us dealing with pre-show jitters and sleep deprivation in our own ways, I was really excited to live and breathe theatre and only theatre for 48 hours straight. No day jobs. No cell-phone signal (at least for me...damn T-mobile!). Just Commedia dell'Artemisia. Again and again and again. The weekend had me lusting after the possibility of a future college tour circuit. (Any colleges out there want to book Commedia? Cross-lists with both Art History and Gender Studies...any takers? Email me if you want to chat about it...)

I'll let the 31 pictures below speak the remaining 31,000 words I had originally intended for this posting. Some on stage, some backstage, some far off stage on Swarthmore's lovely campus. Enjoy!

Alma Mater matters: On Stolen Chair and Swarthmore

Stolen Chair HQ received 3 big emails from Swarthmore College this week. For those of you who don't know the lore (if you already do, you can click ahead to the announcements below), Stolen Chair was founded in 2002 by 10 Swarthmore College students and recent alumni to create a piece for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Though today's Stolen Chair is by no means comprised solely (or even mostly) of Swarthmore alumni (aka "Swatties"), we have maintained a close relationship with the college ever since.

After Kiran and I moved the company to New York in fall of 2002, we continued to collaborate in New York with founding members Kathy Walley and Keetje Kuipers, as well as a handful of other New York Swatties. Kathy is now on our board of directors and training to be an ASL interpreter, and Keetje continues to provide frequent moral support as she pursues a career in poetry.

While part of "growing-up" has obviously meant casting a wider net and beginning to play nicely with children from other schools, some uncanny connections to the college have persisted. David Bengali, our resident designer and director of production, was introduced to us through our former costume designer and current board member, Caroline Barnard, when we were looking for a lighting designer for 2005's Commedia dell'Artemisia. Caroline knew him from Princeton and knew he dug Commedia...turns out he had also collaborated quite a bit with another company founded by Swarthmore alums: Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company, a major inspiration to us while we were undergrads. And Emily Otto, our composer and dramaturg, spotted our Craigslist ad after seeing Pig Iron's Hell Meets Henry Halfway at A.R.T. (where she was working on her MFA) and meeting with the show's dramaturg, Allen Kuharski, the Swarthmore theatre professor (and continuing mentor) who inspired us to create a theatre company in the first place. And I met Alexia and Cameron while we were training with the SITI Company at....(can you guess where?)...SKIDmore--wait, that's not Swarthmore; ah well, close enough!

And somehow, strangely, the line-up of collaborators for this weekend's retreat represents the most Swattie-dominated residency we've had since that very first summer creating Portrait of Dora as a Young Man, and, I, frankly, never could have predicted that we'd be working with these three very talented Swarthmoreans. Aviva Meyer, who had never worked with a theatre company previously (but had, since Stolen Chair's inception, been the company's fairy godmother, providing house management, set-up/strike help, and endless origami out of the goodness of her own heart), was finishing up her masters in public health at Columbia in 2004 when we begged her to come head up Stolen Chair's "offices." And though Sam Dingman (who co-founded the company when he was just a wee college sophomore) performed a curtain-raiser for Commedia dell'Artemisia, Kiran and I hadn't collaborated with him in over 4 years when we began work on Kill Me...! Elisa Matula, another co-founder of the company (who, as you might be able to glean from the inset picture, co-starred with Sam in my directing thesis production of The Dybbuk, adapted by Kiran), has returned to play with Stolen Chair after an even longer hiatus: nearly 5 years living in Paris! Elisa trained for two years at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq and spent a few years after that touring work to international festivals throughout Europe and training at the Roy Hart Theatre (and about a dozen other places I'm still slowly learning about), and though Kiran and I treasured our annual dates in cute little Parisian cafes and wine bars (Kiran has family she visits regularly in Paris and I accompany her to hang out in her Parisian digs and get some work done in what is certainly our most "fancy-pants" retreat destination), we never imagined we'd ever see Elisa in New York, let alone have the opportunity to create work with her again.

And speaking of opportunity, with the support of the Swarthmore Project in Theatre, a program that grants creative residencies in the college's Frear Ensemble Theatre (often with cozy lodgings in a nearby bed and breakfast), Stolen Chair has kicked-off the development processes of 5 of our 9 original productions. Retreats, both at Swarthmore at our Greenwich, CT location, have since become a vital part of each project's conceptualization.

Lastly, whenever we're producing a show, we reach out as much as possible to the Swarthmore alumni network in New York; they're smart, politically engaged, ready to laugh their asses off, and equally willing to be moved--could there be a better audience?!

Now onto the emails:

1. A tear-sheet from the Kill Me Like You Mean It review and Stolen Chair profile which Jeff Lott wrote for the forthcoming March issue of the Swarthmore Alumni Bulletin. I'll post a scan of the review when we get it in the mail in a few weeks.
2. Allen Kuharski, head of Swarthmore's Theatre Department, invited Stolen Chair to present a work as part of the featured entertainment for the 2007 Alumni Weekend. This will be a really nice way to commemorate Stolen Chair's 5th anniversary and Kiran and my (and Elisa and Kathy's) 5th college reunion. We just received confirmation that funding has come through for the project so now we're trying to decide which piece we should resuscitate from our repertory. I'll post details as soon as I have them.
   
3. Okay, to be fair, this item isn't exactly Stolen Chair news, but yours truly is currently trying to sort through logistics so that I can be the guest director for a Swarthmore acting student's solo performance thesis. This is exciting for at least half a dozen reasons, but one that I just realized while typing is that I was the first directing student to devise an original work with professional actors hired by the theatre department for my thesis (a movement-theatre adaptation of The Dybbuk...yes, I did double-Dybbuks for my thesis, I'm that guy!). Coming back to the program as the "hired help" has will be a nice dramaturgical book-end :)
   

Long enough post?